By JOSEPH BERGER

Published: June 2, 2004

The AirTrain terminal, with its sleek driverless trains to Kennedy International Airport, was plunked down six months ago in the middle of a ragged pocket of Jamaica, Queens, and many community leaders predicted it would set off a tide of revitalization.

But these leaders say they are running up against a formidable and familiar barrier, a landlord named Rita Stark.

Ms. Stark, who inherited one of the larger collections of real estate in Queens, owns a defunct meat-processing plant opposite the AirTrain terminal that has sat largely derelict for 15 years. She owns a 19th-century Beaux-Arts limestone Jamaica Savings Bank building a few blocks from the AirTrain that has been empty for 15 years as she has fended off efforts to have it declared a landmark. She owns the three-story plant that published The Long Island Press before that newspaper went out of business in 1977, and most of that building has been idle since.

Few people claim to understand why Ms. Stark would hold such pivotal properties off the market even as the AirTrain is expected to provide a tonic to the neighborhood's bustling spine, Jamaica Avenue.

Whatever the reasons, the puzzle has only added to the mystique of a landlord who is labeled by a community newspaper as the ''notorious real estate heiress'' and whose name, far more than those of other holdout landlords, is often murmured by frustrated Queens politicians.

''Rita has been an obstacle for years,'' said Claire Shulman, the former borough president, who once clashed with Ms. Stark over a fraying shopping center in Far Rockaway. (It is still woebegone.)

Lawrence Gresser, deputy borough president from 1974 to 1979, said ''there's no rational reason she does what she does.''

He added, ''My grandfather once said to me, 'You'll drive yourself crazy if you try to make sense out of nonsense.'''

Ms. Stark, in a long interview in her office with her lawyer at her side, vigorously denied she was obstructing renewal. She said that until now it was hard to sell or rent anything at reasonable prices. But with property values rising, she said, she is on the verge of a deal with a national retailer for the press building. She plans to auction off the four-story bank building next Tuesday with bidding starting at $1.4 million, she said, and is negotiating with the nonprofit Greater Jamaica Development Corporation over a ''joint venture'' to build something new where the meat plant stands.

She indicated that her philosophy was no different from that of landlords in Times Square who held onto seedy properties until the neighborhood revived. ''I'm not opposed -- I'm hoping and praying for development in Jamaica,'' she said. ''You have faith in an area and you know it's coming back, you hold on and see if it comes to fruition.''

Despite her plans to take action with the three properties, her critics do not all think she is relenting. They point out that she has a history of changing her mind. Two years ago, she put the bank on the auction block and at the last minute canceled the sale.

F. Carlisle Towery, president of development corporation, acknowledged that he has been speaking to Ms. Stark about parting with the meat-processing plant. But he said that after two years of negotiations ''she won't sell it.'' ''She's emotionally attached,'' he said.Ms. Stark, who has lived in Queens for most of her 57 years, has burnished her maverick reputation in other ways, most famously as the chief witness against Sheldon Leffler, the longtime councilman who ran for borough president. Confronted by prosecutors with improper campaign donations to Mr. Leffler, she wore a microphone and taped him. Her testimony led to his conviction last November for campaign finance violations. She walked away without penalty.

''Rita plays ditzy but she's not really as ditzy as she seems,'' said Mr. Leffler, who is appealing the verdict.

As the executor of the estate of her father, Fred Stark , who died in 1988, she was sued by her brother, Harold, though the two have reconciled.

Ms. Stark or the estate controls at least 26 properties in Queens -- some vacant lots, some thick with apartments or stores -- but none have aroused more controversy than the three in downtown Jamaica.

Once a shopping hub boasting three department stores -- Macy's, Gertz and Montgomery Ward -- downtown Jamaica went into a slump in the 1960's after residents moved to Long Island or sought out suburban malls with ample parking.

According to Mr. Towery, Jamaica Avenue and connecting streets began bustling again in the late 1980's, and that momentum has picked up with recent additions of a 13-screen theater building that houses Gap and Old Navy outlets and a Bally fitness center. Jamaica has also been the exceptional beneficiary of government largesse, chosen as the site of York College, the Social Security Administration and Food and Drug Administration federal buildings, Queens civil and family courts and the AirTrain, operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Mr. Towery and his planning group have sketched designs for a J.F.K. Corporate Park, which would feature a hotel atop the AirTrain terminal and five other buildings. Thousands of travelers are already using the AirTrain every day, paying $5 for an eight-minute dash to and from the airport, and connecting through the terminal to a 20-minute ride to Midtown Manhattan on the Long Island Rail Road or the E, J and Z subway lines.

Mr. Towery, an Alabama native who has worked for the corporation for more than 30 years, has no illusion that these travelers would take an interlude to shop on Sutphin Boulevard below or nearby Jamaica Avenue. But Mr. Towery and supporters of the Jamaica development believe that some travelers and flight crews would stay at a hotel and try the shops and that aviation-related businesses like JetBlue might prefer offices there. A consultant recently argued that a renewed Jamaica should also entice young urban pioneers like those who invigorated Brooklyn's brownstone neighborhoods.

One of the properties that would have to be bulldozed to make the project work is Ms. Stark's meat factory, once the headquarters of Merkel Inc. The gunmetal building is tumbledown, its clock stopped at 6:37. On Mr. Towery's visionary map, it is the site for a commercial building and garage.

If Ms. Stark does have a sentimental attachment to her properties, it may have something to do with her family's rags-to-riches story. Ms. Stark's father immigrated at 13 from Austria, worked as a painter and contractor, sold hardware and appliances, then specialized in building apartments in St. Albans and Hollis for elderly and single people of modest means, often furnishing them himself. Ms. Stark obtained a law degree from Hofstra University and went into her father's business.

Real estate professionals in the area said she was overwhelmed when Fred Stark's empire fell in her lap and had trouble figuring out how to pay for enhancing rundown properties.

Ms. Stark said that until the early 1990's she had been able to rent portions of the meat plant to butchers, but it did not draw reasonable offers until the AirTrain became a reality.

''Forces greater than me changed the entire area,'' she said.

Photos: Rita Stark, in a family photo with Fred Stark before his death in 1988, inherited her father's Queens properties, including, clockwise from top left, a furniture store, a meat-processing plant, a newspaper plant and an apartment building. (Photographs by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times; apartment building by Angela Jimenez for The New York Times); Hopes for neighborhood revitalization in Jamaica: a rendering of J.F.K. Corporate Park at the AirTrain terminal. (Photo by Greater Jamaica Development Corporation)(pg. B1); A 1950's family photo of Fred Stark's hardware store on Hollis Avenue. (pg. B4)